I think it's normal for people not to comment. I've been running a baseball blog for 10 years now and even though some posts get hundreds of hits, they don't get comments. Yet I know people are reading them and enjoying them. For the vast majority of people reading, they are lurkers. Even if they love the stuff, they may feel they don't know what to say, not realizing that just a "Hey, this was great" comment really encourages the writer. Sometimes I think the better writer you are, too, the fewer comments you get (whereas if you are obviously struggling with your style or the story... people are less intimidated to say something and also more likely to leave critique). People are weird.
If you expectations for the volume of comments are set by your experiences in LiveJournal, it's really different "out there" in the wider Internet. I'm doing a weekly m/m erotic fantasy serial, for example, and now after having run for close to a year, it is finally getting 2-4 comments per chapter. I"m not shocked at ALL that pretty much all of them are being left by people I know THROUGH fanfic communities in LiveJournal, so they are used to it. Also, I've been posting a teaser with fake-cut to each new chapter from my fic LJ, so it feels to some of those readers more like it's an extension of their LJ experience, perhaps.
On the baseball blog I started asking for donations many years ago, and although I never got much in the way of dollars it did get me some interesting items in the mail. People often sent me books, T-shirts, and other things. Once I got a case of beef jerky (since I had mentioned liking to eat it as a ballgame snack... and a guy who worked at the Oberto factory saw that.) I was not very aggressive about trying to get donations though.
With the crowdfunded fiction project I'm doing, Daron's Guitar Chronicles, I am probably going to be more aggressive with the donation button, but I'm not sure. I have friends who can make a decent amount busking on the street. They say for every 99 people who walk past, one gives something. Right now that serial doesn't even have 100 visitors a week, so I am not surprised no donations have come yet since November 1 when I launched. There have also been a total of maybe 5? 6? comments, on 30+ chapters so far? I know people are enjoying it--they sometimes even drop me email or Twitter notes to say so. But they don't comment on the site itself.
Last thing -- this comment got a lot longer than I thought... One thing I've always pointed out on my donation pages is that the relative cost of throwing in a few bucks is not that high. Some price points I sometimes bring up:
$2 daily New York Times $3 Starbucks hot chocolate $7 paperback novel $10 admission to a movie $30 hardcover book
It's totally normal for a guy standing on the street corner playing the guitar to get a dollar from passerby now and then -- why shouldn't I ask for the same? You're sharing your art with the world. The "secret" though is building up the traffic so that your street corner is very very busy. I'm working on that part now...
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Date: 2010-01-18 06:56 pm (UTC)If you expectations for the volume of comments are set by your experiences in LiveJournal, it's really different "out there" in the wider Internet. I'm doing a weekly m/m erotic fantasy serial, for example, and now after having run for close to a year, it is finally getting 2-4 comments per chapter. I"m not shocked at ALL that pretty much all of them are being left by people I know THROUGH fanfic communities in LiveJournal, so they are used to it. Also, I've been posting a teaser with fake-cut to each new chapter from my fic LJ, so it feels to some of those readers more like it's an extension of their LJ experience, perhaps.
On the baseball blog I started asking for donations many years ago, and although I never got much in the way of dollars it did get me some interesting items in the mail. People often sent me books, T-shirts, and other things. Once I got a case of beef jerky (since I had mentioned liking to eat it as a ballgame snack... and a guy who worked at the Oberto factory saw that.) I was not very aggressive about trying to get donations though.
With the crowdfunded fiction project I'm doing, Daron's Guitar Chronicles, I am probably going to be more aggressive with the donation button, but I'm not sure. I have friends who can make a decent amount busking on the street. They say for every 99 people who walk past, one gives something. Right now that serial doesn't even have 100 visitors a week, so I am not surprised no donations have come yet since November 1 when I launched. There have also been a total of maybe 5? 6? comments, on 30+ chapters so far? I know people are enjoying it--they sometimes even drop me email or Twitter notes to say so. But they don't comment on the site itself.
Last thing -- this comment got a lot longer than I thought... One thing I've always pointed out on my donation pages is that the relative cost of throwing in a few bucks is not that high. Some price points I sometimes bring up:
$2 daily New York Times
$3 Starbucks hot chocolate
$7 paperback novel
$10 admission to a movie
$30 hardcover book
It's totally normal for a guy standing on the street corner playing the guitar to get a dollar from passerby now and then -- why shouldn't I ask for the same? You're sharing your art with the world. The "secret" though is building up the traffic so that your street corner is very very busy. I'm working on that part now...